I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Nobody can ever make enough money for as many poor relatives as I’ve got. Somebody’s got a sick kid, or somebody needs an operation, somebody ain’t got this, somebody ain’t got that. Or to give the kids all a car when they graduate.

You do projects with the hope they will be big and hope they will go beyond what you imagine.

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

I feel very lucky to make a living from my imagination; I’m very grateful for that. I like that what I do is create. I’m feeling very lucky to have had the career I had. It’s gone much longer and bigger than I ever thought it would be.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

I played football for a team called the East Dragons on the east side of town. We only had six regular season games. And six games I played tail back and I had 18 touchdowns in six games. That’s when I knew I had some athletic ability.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

I made all my generals out of mud.

A woman can’t be alone. She needs a man. A man and a woman support and strengthen each other. She just can’t do it by herself.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

Partnering with Atlantic Records creates the opportunity to take what we’re doing to the next level, without compromising.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

I do believe in the energy and the productivity of the American business world.

Feeling like you’re respected among the people who do the same thing you do is incredible and necessary.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.

OK, I have a nickname. My family calls me ‚Trey‘ because I’m William the third. My dad has the same name, which is always confusing because my dad is well known, and I’m also known.

The painter who is familiar with the nature of the sinews, muscles, and tendons, will know very well, in giving movement to a limb, how many and which sinews cause it; and which muscle, by swelling, causes the contraction of that sinew; and which sinews, expanded into the thinnest cartilage, surround and support the said muscle.

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

My family is very good about visiting me, and other friends as well.

My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn’t have any money, because Africa was the ‚dark continent‘, and because I was a girl.

A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

I don’t know that there is much the United States can do except work with the international community.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

My ultimate life dream project is my kids. My family.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

If my businesses or my investments are not profitable, then I don’t eat. And I like to eat.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.

My interest in creating anything is that it be useful.

The Revlon Run/Walk effort to focus on women’s cancer has my wholehearted support and gratitude.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.